Fish Tales

I promised updates.

This fact dawned on me as I stood in front of the corkboards in the student lounge browsing the posters to avoid staring at my herb notes.

I wish that I could say that finals are over, but they’re not. Five down, two to go. This afternoon I actually constructed a seven day schedule for myself. It looks like this:

Friday: study

Saturday: study

Sunday: study

Monday: take final #6 and then study

Tuesday: study

Wednesday: study

Thursday: take final #7

Sadly, 98% of the studying I am going to do over the next seven days is for one class. It’s that intensive. I’ll be relieved when it’s over.

Right now, I am cramming as much information into my noggin as possible because, tonight, we are going to venture to Balboa Park for the December Nights festival. Every December for two nights, the park museums are open to the public for free. The Museum of Art, the Photographic Arts Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Air and Space Museum… all free admission. I love it. Of course, the international food and drink provided by various venders is also quite attractive. Eric and I went last year and had a blast. This year will be even more exciting since it will be a welcomed break from studying. Mmmm… I can taste the perogies and Turkish coffee already.

Anyway, I will continue to update regularly so don’t go anywhere.

Peace.

Okay, the video of the falls I posted was just annoying. Especially since we (and by we I mean I) have been slacking off on blogging. So … I deleted it.

Once upon a time, I wrote poems.

I wonder if I’ll ever come to write them again…

I dreamt of fire twice last night. In the first dream, someone I know very well was reenacting a story of a man who died by fire and she lit herself on fire to show me how it happened. She continued to tell the story as her skin charred and peeled away from her body and as her limbs fell off one by one. In the second dream, I stood in the living room of my house and watch as a wild fire crept closer and closer to my home. The fire moved quickly like the cloud of destruction we see in movies after a nuclear blast. I was on the phone with my father giving him a blow by blow account of what I saw: people running for their lives. By the time I realized the fire was upon me, it was too late to run. I remember vividly feeling the heat of the fire on my skin before it consumed me.

Today, I made a second pot of coffee for myself. I rarely drink more than a half a mug of a coffee a day. But lately, I crave it all the time.

Tomorrow, we are leaving to spend a long weekend in a town called Mammoth Lakes located somewhere in the mountains of Eastern California just shy of Yosemite National Park. This is my attempt at little R&R before finals. Regroup and recharge.

As I have mentioned, I just spent the last three days studying the axil skeleton which is composed of the skull, vertebral column, and bony thorax or thoracic cage (the ribs, the thoracic vertebrae, the sternum). So, I am intimately familiar with the structure of each subdivision and its functions.

This afternoon, while jogging a three mile loop around the neighborhood, I got to the thinking about the bones, muscles, and cartilage in the thoracic cage as I attempted to deepen my breath. Then I began to picture my thoracic cage rising and falling, expanding and contracting as I labored to take in as much oxygen as possible. In my brain, I could see the first ten of my twelve ribs expanding laterally and contracting medially with each inhale. I could picture my sternum angling anteriorly at the sternal angle just below the manubrium. I could imagine the nucleus pulposus of the internal portion of my vertebrae absorbing the shock of my footfalls. In my head, I could see the real thing… the slime, the colors, the horror-film version of it all. And all I could think was…

EW!

Everyone,

I have a problem. It is called Sun-Dried Tomatoes. I’ve been eating them like candy.

Also, I have a pain in my ass. It is called Clueless Leasing Agent. I had to educate him on landlord/tenant law today. Imagine that. Here is how our conversation progressed:

Me: Blah, blah, blah. I want to clear up this misunderstanding.

Him: Well, Aubry, it is written in your leasing agreement blah, blah, blah.

Me: Acutally, sir, I read the lease word for word prior to calling you. That is not written anywhere in the lease.

Him: Oh, but blah, blah, blah.

Me: Acutally, I spent the last hour researching California landlord/tenant law. According to the State of California, a landlord cannot collect rent twice for the same unit. So, we are entitled to a portion of our money back.

Him: Oh.

Folks, this is why it is important to know your rights. It might be a pain in the ass to do a little research or part with $100.00 of your hard earned cash to consult with an attorney for an hour, but in the the long run it will pay off. Most of the time, the people who are telling you you can’t are as clueless as you.

Back in the day, Eric drank his coffee black and I loaded mine with sugar so it was always quite humorous when one of us would misjudge the other’s mug for our own and drink from it. Whenever I took a swig of the bitter black coffee I would wrinkle my nose, swallow hard, and then dance around the kitchen in disgust. In Eric’s case, he would raise an eyebrow, spit the contents of his mouth back into the mug thereby rendering my coffee unfit for human consumption, stick out his tongue and go, “BLAH!” Then, without a word exchanged between the two of us, we’d switch coffee mugs and resume our conversation.

These days I too drink my coffee black so when the coffee mugs mingle we will investigate the Mystery of the Mixed-Up Coffee Mugs like trained law enforcement officers. Detective Eric will analyze the hard, physical evidence. I will interview the witnesses and reconstruct the crime scene. We will waste two (maybe three) minutes of our lives attempting to solve the mystery before we determine that it doesn’t really matter and sip from a mug within reach. But, always, the same mix up will occur fifteen minutes later and we will find ourselves once again trying to crack the case.

I think for his birthday this year I am going to get Eric a coffee mug that reads, “ERIC’S MUG” and it will have a picture of his face on it. Get it! Ha! Mystery solved!

I love yoga for the same reasons everyone loves yoga. It is a great physical and mental workout. It is challenging, energizing, and way cheaper than a fitness center membership.

When I practice yoga at home I spend a lot of time intimately close to the floors of my apartment. And, thanks to yoga, it is there that I can see every crumb, every hair, every piece of dirt that has settled since I last cleaned.

Damn you yoga!

My breasts were invited to a shindig this Sunday by a chatty drunk man who introduced himself as Pablo. Pablo cornered me at the intersection of Broadway and 13^th to extend to me an invite to this “bad ass thing” in Balboa Park on Sunday “in that place where he plays dominoes but two blocks further up” which is going to have “all kinds of fun kids shit and shit.” Only Pablo didn’t really tell me about the party. He told my breasts. He spoke to my boobs with the same attention and enthusiasm one might give to a close friend in the heat of conversation. If I wasn’t so appalled and a little bit terrified, I might have been amused. He was quite animated, very excited, and oddly polite.

Oh Pablo! If my boobs had teeth, they would have bitten the tip of your nose off and spat (spit?) it back at you. Ass.

Eric and I viewed a two bedroom/two bathroom rental property the other night that boosted ocean views from the dining room area. I stood in the dining room area searching for the ocean view. I saw the tops of a lot of houses. I saw palm trees. I saw telephone poles and cables and concrete. But I did not see the ocean. Then I moved to the very left corner of the large window in the dining room area, stood on my tippy-tip-toes, and leaned forward so that my face was smashed against the glass. In that position, I caught a glimpse of the ocean. I think.